That's exactly the attitude to have. Nobody likes to watch the capital evaporate on paper but it's part of the game. As long as you have new money to invest the downturns work out VERY WELL over time. I'm getting closer to retirement so my timing matters some on new purchases. You'll understand when you are a few years out. I sold a lot of puts this fall so I am gradually rolling into a lot of long positions with the downturn. It saved me from being down much worse. I'll be bugging you for that DIV tracker spreadsheet sometime soon. It looks pretty slick and I'll like to track my income growth as well. It would be nice to have something positive to track while we wait for Mr Market.

This page has a snapshot of my real-time portfolio, there is a tab on the spreadsheet for dividend $ received and dividend shares where I track everything. The reinvested dividends automatically update to the front page, which then updates my portfolio value and projected income.

My resources page has a link to a Google doc portfolio tracker sample at the bottom if you want to copy it and play around with it.

Also for income, I just update the "dividend rate" cell whenever a company announces a dividend increase, and my projected income total updates automatically.

Thanks Eric. I will grab them tonight. I am fairly proficient with Excel and I want to add a column or two for my put/calls sales as I consider them part of the purchase. My positions are 100 shares 90% of the time. That part is easy because I can just subtract the option premium from my entry basis. Once in the port I sell calls if a stock runs wild and becomes overvalued later. A few times per year a position gets called away. It's rare but it happens. Then immediately back in with a put sale. It's all income in the end and I want to track it. Still holding the same stocks and collecting the DGI dividend increases over time. Hope that made some sense. I know your positions are usually smaller and you aren't dealing with this accounting complication. The premiums often exceed a full years dividends so I want to track it.

Here's a stock by stock breakdown of how the portfolio's overall dividend income grew by 14.6% in 2018. I enjoy putting these together because it shows me which companies met my 10% income growth goal for the year, and which ones I may need to take a closer look at for replacement.

My Q1 portfolio update was posted on Seeking Alpha this afternoon. It was a good quarter in Q1 as the portfolio saw 12.4% YoY income growth and hit a new all-time high valuation. I also discussed in a little more depth the trades I made back in February.